Very nice day in the forecast. Probably gonna be ugly. [wasn’t, was cool and sunny, then warm and sunny, great day]
Yesterday was beautiful. Started cooler, but warmed up. Nice and sunny all day.
Didn’t get much done either. In fact, got almost nothing done. Almost like I took a day off. What I really did was just play hooky from life, except to make dinner, and I initially screwed that up too. Wasted the morning though.
I did get one drawer cleaned in the kitchen fridge. Yea me!
And I spent some time talking with my mom, which is a good thing. She’s doing fine. Getting restless, which is bad, ’cause she’ll be trying to go out. Right now her intellect is winning, but it wouldn’t take much for her to just throw caution to the wind and go to bridge club. Lot’s of folks in that position, I think.
Today I’ll make up for my slacking. Probably.
Keep stacking.
n
@SteveF: You’re on the mark with your essay. This is exactly where progressives go wrong: they offer so much sympathy to individuals from crappy circumstances that they don’t consider what happens when you import waves of such individuals.
One person from Elbonia is no problem. Import half of Elbonia and you’ve imported Elbonian culture. Which is a problem. Part of one of my favorite quotes: “All cultures are most certainly not of equal value – and the more clearly we understand them, the more obvious that becomes.”
I would submit that there is also a direct relationship between a high-trust society and a society with smaller, more-local government. A large, remote government is faceless – a bureaucracy that imposes rules and consequences. There is no personal relationship, no personal consideration, and the bureaucrats never see the consequences of their actions.
Hence, a high-trust society requires small, local government. You know the mayor and he lives just a couple of streets over. If he screws up, he will not only lose his office: he will also suffer social consequences. Your town government is truly under the control of the voters. A federal government of 300+ million people is not, and cannot be.
I’m not sure what the upper bound is, but I think we (Switzerland) are approaching it with our 8 million. One of the members of our federal council was recently spotted taking public transport after a late-night session. No hangers on, no body guards, just another passenger. While that’s good, it was also news-worthy – which is not good. Of course he’s just another passenger – or should be.
When I lived in Oregon 50 years ago people that lived there complained about the people from California moving to Oregon and destroying the quiet country living. Fifty years later they are still complaining. Those doing the complaining are the ones that moved from California. Seems it’s OK for them to make the move but not others. On my last visit I asked one of the ones that had made the move, was complaining, why it was OK for them to move but not others. I got a nasty response as they stormed away.
You also have to marvel at the way that they vote for all the same programs and ideas that caused the problems they fled.
That’s the thing that boggles my mind, brad. Are they that stupid? Evidence points to Yes.
If I were to abandon New York State, which I plan to do in a few years, it would be because the libtard downstaters are ruining it for everyone, outnumber the rest of the state, and can’t be persuaded to think or to go away or to kill themselves. The people wherever I moved to would reasonably look askance at me, but it should become obvious with about five minutes of talking to me that I support low taxes, small government, and leaving people to find paradise or hell on their own.
It was the same 50 years ago. Move to Oregon, my area, Southern Oregon, to get away from the overcrowding and too many people. Then sub-divide the land or sell a chunk to a housing developer to create what they came from. Then complain there are too many people moving into the area. Too much traffic. Nothing has changed.
People on one of the groups on FB for the area say they moved to the area to have freedom to do as they please. Then complain about those that are doing as they please making too much noise. When one lives in a rural area there will be noise from shooting, people running four wheelers, chainsaws, chickens, cows; and the associated smell. They move into an area wanting to have what they desire by restricting others who want what they desire.
I continue to get a laugh when people on the group complain about too many people from California moving into the area. Making it undesirable. I then ask the complainers where they are from and almost universally it is California. Why they think they should be allowed to relocate but others cannot remains a mystery. Except for the “me first” and “only my needs matter” personalities which seem to describe most of them.
When I lived in the area there were a lot of hippies moving into the area. These people wanted to be left alone to live how they wanted. They generally used property well off the main road up in the hills, generally remote. Good people for the most part. Kept to themselves and did not bother others. If someone needed help they would show up to help in a heartbeat. But their lifestyle really annoyed people in the area. Even though it had no really effect on the people living in the area it was a real sore point.
At one time a law was passed in the county restricting property ownership in a way that I didn’t understand to try and eliminate the communes. Unfortunately the way the law was written it affected many people in the area that had been long time residents. Their self-righteous attitudes caused them a lot of problems. It caused issues for the property my aunt and uncle owned when they tried to lease some acreage that we did not use. The law was quickly removed when it was discovered the harm it was causing. I think, a guess, the law may have run afoul of state laws.
Same sort of thing happened with DFW airport. Built between Dallas and Fort Worth in a rural area. Very little development, remote, few houses, mostly farm land. Then people started building houses, lots of them. The area developed. Then people starting complaining about the noise forcing the airport to change operating practices. When you move to an area with an airport you should accept what you got. An informed decision was made. To try and change existing infrastructure because you don’t like what has been there for dozens of years is just childish.
My grandfather bought property on a bluff overlooking a valley in Southern California. The valley was primarily dairy farms, huge farms, hundreds of animals each. Occasionally when the wind shifted there was an odor from the farms. My grandfather’s attitude was the dairy’s were there first thus the problem was his problem. Over time the area built up. Homes were built on the bluff, homes were built in the valley. Eventually there was an uproar over the odor from the dairy’s. This forced many to cease operation or spend big bucks on odor control. The dairy farms were in that area because it was originally not populated and they all shared the same issue. The odor did not bother the dairy owners. But the cretins that moved in forced a drastic change for the dairy owners, a change in their lifestyle, all because of the selfish demands of others.
Last time I was in the area, many, many years back, visiting the grandparents home, I caught a whiff of the odor from the dairy’s. It brought back a lot of memories of days spent on that bluff. But then I grew up on a farm and don’t find animal odors that offensive.
You also have to marvel at the way that they vote for all the same programs and ideas that caused the problems they fled.
Oregon’s income tax going to 11.5% to support education, “for the children”.
Partners at my wife’s clinic who lived on the “hip” side of the river saw a negative benefit from their draw checks after taxes and payments on the buy-in loans after the “Bush” tax cuts expired and the rate on dividends went to an effective 50% in Oregon. Fortunately for the clinic, most doctors are blind to numbers.
I’ve noted before that, during our time in Vantucky, the “Twilight” movies filmed everything on location in Oregon *except* the high school. High schools of the correct period in the state near Portland were too decrepit so the film crew drove an hour north to film on location at the high school in Kalama, WA.
On a side note, my wife’s former office in WA State is still closed. I think, combined, in the last 15 months, the place has been closed nearly four months for various reasons.
Tennessee pulled that crap in the early ‘90s. Raised the sales tax by 1 percent, temporary of course, to be used to fund education, “for the children”. Thirty years later that temporary tax is still in place. The intended purpose for education has been ignored.
Now we have a lottery. For education. Another scam. The money is going to schools but is merely coming from a different bucket. Funding is still the same. TN does have the Hope scholarship which is good but is only a fraction of what is earned from the lottery.
The scam worked by deception. A school That was getting $1 million a year is still getting that amount. The lottery wasn’t additional funding, just an alternative funding source. Money from the general fund is funding less. Effectively the lottery money went into the general fund as the general fund is paying less for the schools.
Politicians playing games or completely ignorant and being scammed. I suspect all three.
Nice article Steve. There is a ‘tribal’ or family unit component to the societies too, with only ‘family’ or ‘tribe’ being at all trustworthy in low trust societies. And there is a bigger version of that with Islam, which makes sense given the type of societies islam came from, ie. very much an us vs them or insider vs outsider.
Everyone tends to think that other people are just like them, and that causes problems from both sides when you mix high and low trust cultures.
Too many of our inner cities have become low trust cultures thru immigration, white flight, or just a descent into lawlessness.
n
A long, multiweek twitter thread on COVID deaths. (Be sure to click for more of the tweets when you get to the comments from other twitterati on about May 6.)
Here is a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet with breakdowns of COVID deaths in states where nursing home deaths are broken out.
TL;DR: Nursing home deaths about 50% of US total. Some states adopted policies that made the situation worse. Some adopted policies that helped. Most were in the middle.
My take is that the states need to adopt procedures to protect nursing homes and the vulnerable, open things up even more when that is in place. Aggressive contact tracing for cases, quarantine orders.
Absolutely. The MSM and Progs love death counts. The higher, the better, for more control.
And, as Mr. Ray has pointed out, many people in *nursing homes* are on their final leg to the great reward.
Can I just say that the use of 10- to 12-point font on the signs that restaurants and other business have posted to their door is driving me crazy. Thank you so much for posting a sign that I have to park and get out of my car and walk up to the door to read it. Damn. Make the print big enough that someone with 20/20 vision sitting in a car in front of your business can read. Ugh! Also, no need to waste half of the sign saying that the reason you’re closed or doing business differently than usual is because of COVID-19. We know that. Everyone knows that. Spare me the unnecessary paragraph about complying with social distancing guidelines and wanting to protect your staff. It’s a waste of real estate on that piece of paper that could be better put to use with a larger font for the part of the sign that’s actually useful.
Probably required by some legal standard to keep the lawyers at arm’s length. This entire event is ripe for the cesspool lawyers to try and make a big buck. Failure to include the entire wording may just land a business in legal trouble.
All true. Keep in mind that you must cater to the lowest level – the tide pod eaters, the need an ad to be a good father type, the where is my free stuff type, etc… But yeah, lawyers.
Wells Fargo let us know our request for PPP is being processed after “tough shit, we took care of our indebted clients first on the first round”. We applied hour 1 on the original, with our daughter sitting at the computer refreshing the screen. Still no answer if we are approved. How many days has it been since we saw banks actually accepting applications? How many businesses let their employees go waiting this long? Are you still eligible if you let them go? Wasn’t that part of the original plan? Or can you just prove you hadn’t let them go up till hour 1? Do you get the PPP, but no forgiveness if you let employees go waiting? We were fortunate to have cash on hand for payroll and some coming in from completed gigs.
Is it wrong to hope that the virus was bioengineered specifically to take out the ambulance-chaser lawyers first?
Monday blahs. Funny, since I have not been to town since March 14, every day seems about the same. It will probably seem strange when I resume going into town. Drove a car yesterday to test some work I had done. Just made my local test loop, which does include a major road where I can get some speed. It was eerily vacant all the way. We live at the end of a very minor dirt street that dissipates into a trail at our corner, so are used to very little traffic by the house. I used to joke that I could put a table in the middle of the road and have a leisurely dinner without disrupting traffic. Exaggeration, but maybe not by much. Vewy qwiet.
I have kept the following link for my occasional blahs (mine, not those here):
https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2016/11/19/saturday-19-november-2016/#comments
The pictures are always interesting. Today, I also read all the comments, plus some from a couple days before. Some people missed, and some missing.
I’m teleworking today, but had to take my son to an appointment. Traffic was around normal levels in the late morning in the downtown area. I’ve noticed morning and afternoon traffic is pretty much back to schools out normal levels. I’m still planning on staying home except for a trip to the grocery store every other week until at least the end of this month. Oh, and a trip to pick up my freezer that hopefully arrives this week.
Swan Eaters: Nazis in the camp !
https://www.gocomics.com/swan-eaters/2020/05/11
I am not sure where we are going now.
I have until Friday to decide if I am going to protest the valuation on my commercial property this year. The Fort Bend Central Appraisal District has raised the value of my commercial property by a little over 13% this year. Mostly the land value. I am not happy but I do not have comps or anything to protest with.
Wizard of Id: sleeping with a dragon
https://www.gocomics.com/wizardofid/2020/05/11
When I was younger, I thought having a fire breathing dragon as a pet would be cool. The past few years of WID has corrected that view.
TL;DR: Nursing home deaths about 50% of US total. Some states adopted policies that made the situation worse. Some adopted policies that helped. Most were in the middle.
The standard of practice in the USA is when a hospital can do nothing else for a patient (or the patient has run out of funds), the hospital will move the patient to rehab to help them gain strength for going back into society. Rehabs are just nursing homes under another name. Many of the new patients are showing up with SARS-COV-2. Not good.
In times of pandemic, nursing homes / rehabs must be shut down to visitors and new patients. And the nurses need to stop moonlighting at other jobs, often other nursing homes.
I rewatched both seasons of “Wayward Pines” this weekend. It is probably too late to hope for a season three but, I do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Pines
and
https://tvline.com/2018/02/26/wayward-pines-cancelled-fox-no-season-3/
I hope someone writes this down. I guess Cuomo didn’t.
A number of new residents arrived in the nursing homes back in my home county in the Adirondacks. There had previously been no Chinese Flu cases in the nursing homes and no Chinese Flu deaths in the county. I don’t know if any cases had been diagnosed in the county before that.
As of a week ago, there were dozens of cases of Chinese Flu in the nursing homes and deaths are expected. Sure, some number of deaths are to be expected in any nursing home in any month, but it’s looking worse than normal.
There’s a reasonable case to be made that the NYS health — “health” — department, acting under Cuomo’s direction, will be responsible for the deaths of dozens of nursing home residents.
New Roborock vacuum arrived. I vacuumed the entire house with the big vacuum then set the Roborock (R2D2) to work. It got about 2/3 done before the battery hit 20% at which point it returned to the dock to charge. Made a straight line from the living room to the den where the charging base is located, shortest path. Cleaning will resume when the battery charges.
The map it drew of the house is slick. Reasonable representation of the arrangement of the house. I did set a couple of virtual walls on the map so the vacuum would avoid the rooms. Works well.
Less noisy than my old Roomba. What was surprising is the amount of dirt that was picked up after having just vacuumed. This carpet is only two weeks old. Thus it seems to clean well. Dirt container and filter are both washable with water. That is something I could not do with the Roomba as the blower motor is in the dust container.
Short answer in a short use time, recommended. But expensive. I paid almost $700.00 for the device.
“In times of pandemic, nursing homes / rehabs must be shut down to visitors and new patients. And the nurses need to stop moonlighting at other jobs, often other nursing homes.”
I hope someone writes this down. I guess Cuomo didn’t.
Good luck eliminating the moonlighting. The aides and orderlies typically have a couple of those kind of jobs to make ends meet.
Good luck eliminating the moonlighting. The aides and orderlies typically have a couple of those kind of jobs to make ends meet.
That’s a really good point. I’m convinced (and I’d love to see some data one way or another) that hand to surface transmission is of far greater import than airborne transmission, whether by orderlies or lawn cutters.
Ray, congrats on that new robotic vacuum. Good to see it is an improvement over the old one. What follows is not to disparage any vacuum, but to reinforce the good effects of vacuuming often, and slowly.
I’m sure most of us are acquainted with the old vacuum cleaner salesman’s trick of asking the potential customer to vacuum a small area. He then follows with his new vacuum, and shows all the dirt it picks up. What is never done is to vacuum a third time, using the customer’s freshly emptied vacuum, or any vacuum for that matter. Sure enough, it will pick up some dirt, often a surprising amount. It takes several slow passes to get a high percentage of dirt, but it is impossible to get it all. The technically smart here will probably guess that the dirt removed has a logarithmic relation to time spent vacuuming. Whatever the equation is, the nature of attempting to clean all the dirt from a carpet is challenging.
I searched for a test of this, but Google was not smiling today. Most results were useless, except this one, which might have some good information:
https://carpet-rug.org/testing/seal-of-approval-program/vacuums/
Unfortunately, it is crammed with links to long documents, so TL:DR. I am out of time right now. Maybe later. Maybe not.
I have been interested in cleaning, and have bought several vacuums, as I have mentioned before. In my experience, some perform better than others, sometimes by a lot, but not one does everything well. That’s life.
Having the same problem up in Canada. The pay is not that high, and in some cases the retirement homes prefer to hire through agencies to fill just a few shifts because then they don’t have to hire the nurse or orderly full-time and become responsible for benefits. Elder care is looking like a total S**t-show with low costs the only goal, screw quality of care. The response to this will be expensive and require a lot of regulation of the retirement homes. Of course, in Ontario it would require we actually perform proper inspections – turns out that for at least a year prior to this inspections were pre-arranged visits. Unsurprisingly, the management would staff-up and clean-up for that day, then return to shoddy processes. Complaints would be handled via a phone call to the home operator. After this is over, some (political) heads may roll.
Oh yes, I am aware of that issue. My point was the vacuum apparently has reasonable suction for being small. I also have a machine, older model, in the basement area. Full apartment that no one has used in four years. Exchange students would stay there. The first few passes were indicative that the exchange students rarely cleaned. That vacuum, four years later, is still pulling up dirt. Not as much and in fact is getting less each month, but still dirt. I empty the bin every 10 days or when I have to hunt down the vacuum.
This new vacuum shows me exactly what it has cleaned and where it is within the house. Should never get lost again. When the battery gets down to 20% it heads to it’s charging station. Really slick.
When I moved into a new apartment, I’d vacuum the carpets. Very slow passes, in both directions (ie. a second time at right angle to the first. ) Got lots of dirt the second pass.
I worked in a carpet store part time for a while, and the two pieces of advice the old guy gave me–
-vacuum well regularly, dirt particles cut the carpet fibers so the carpet will degrade faster than a clean carpet
-use the crevice tool every time, and vac that edge around the room. The beater bar won’t get down in the lower area between the tack strip and the base molding. You need to do this especially if you have gas appliances or burn candles as the soot will collect there.
That’s the secret, keep it clean and it will look nice a lot longer.
n
Some vacuums, and I’ve heard Shark accused of this, have a very stiff and aggressive brush and so all that stuff you see in the canister that other vacuum brands “missed” is actually carpet fiber ripped out by that stiff brush. Not a good thing.
Some vacuums, and I’ve heard Shark accused of this, have a very stiff and aggressive brush and so all that stuff you see in the canister that other vacuum brands “missed” is actually carpet fiber ripped out by that stiff brush. Not a good thing.
We have a 15 lb Siamese male cat. He is the one ripping out the carpet fibers. And the dog when she goes crazy and turns her 25 lbs on a dime and accelerates to 30 mph in a foot.
I finished installing the new east side fence line heavy duty chicken wire fencing over the weekend so that little miss “I can skinny under the old chicken wire fence” cannot get out anymore. Hopefully. I put up almost 200 ft of fence so far. Only 300 ft more to go (back and west sides). I used this fencing inside our “country wood fence” of three horizontal 2 inch by 6 inch planks nailed to a 4 inch by 6 inch post every ten foot or so:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-4-ft-x-100-ft-Steel-Welded-Wire-308312EB/205960859
>”One person from Elbonia is no problem.”
The question, then, is what rate of immigration is tenable? I think it is about a half of one percent or less per year.
>”You also have to marvel at the way that they vote for all the same programs and ideas that caused the problems they fled.”
Not to mention the irony of many of them having come to California from somewhere else, as well.
>”If I were to abandon New York State . . .”
I recommend having a go at making New York City separate into its own state. Its population is already greater than many larger states. Maybe a few adjacent boroughs would like to join them.
“Musk reopens Tesla’s plant, dares authorities to arrest him”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/musk-reopens-tesla-s-plant-dares-authorities-to-arrest-him/ar-BB13VZkE
“Tesla sued the county over the weekend after it told the company it didn’t meet criteria to reopen. Newsom, who allowed manufacturing in parts of the state to restart May 8, said Monday that the county was allowed to enforce stricter rules around reopening. The health officers for Alameda and six other San Francisco Bay area counties and cities decided late last month to extend their restrictions on businesses through the end of May.”
Musk is living large. And Newsom needs Musk’s backing for his Newsom ‘2024 campaign.
If the County decides to put Musk in jail then all hell will break loose.
>”If I were to abandon New York State . . .”
I recommend having a go at making New York City separate into its own state. Its population is already greater than many larger states. Maybe a few adjacent boroughs would like to join them.
Two more ultra-liberal senators.
>”One person from Elbonia is no problem.”
The question, then, is what rate of immigration is tenable? I think it is about a half of one percent or less per year.
Just shut it down for now like we did from 1925 to 1965. No relatives other than spouses. We need to absorb the thirty million illegals running around the place right now.
Ok, the number of new SARS-COV-2 deaths in the USA appears to have peaked and is back around a thousand per day. Hopefully the number of daily deaths keeps on dropping. See the “Daily New Deaths in the United States” graph.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
The general populace in the USA have had it with the quarantine. 33 million jobs have been lost, I suspect many of the jobs lost are permanent. Maybe 1/3rd. Hopefully not half of them. Please not half of them.
My wife attempted to do a doctor visit through her cell phone this morning. It was a freaking disaster. What a joke !
Invoke the Compromise, for every new lib state, one new reactionary state…
Spent the afternoon out. Picked up an auction load. Everything was waiting on a table outside in the sun. I got some project parts, some lighting and a light box for shooting photos of small objects for ebay, and some sporting goods.
Then I went by my secondary location and did some cleaning up there. Spent some time talking to a couple of people there, was late getting home for dinner, so the elk will wait until tomorrow. One of the recipes suggested letting it sit in the fridge and any blood drain out for at least a day, so I’m pretending that this was all to plan…
On my trip I had to cross downtown twice and travel near Hobby Airport. Traffic was light. Not SUPER light, but still much lighter than normal.
Beautiful day…
n